Keeping Your Profits Intact

Although thousands of new business websites are going up everyday, not everyone is succeeding with E-commerce. Many people who lose out on sales and end up failing do so for two of the same reasons: abandoned sales and charge backs.

Lost Sales

Today’s shopping cart applications offer numerous features. However, all of them are designed to collect sensitive information from your customers. This includes their contact information and credit card numbers among other details. While this is a standard procedure of online shopping, one needs to consider the perspective of the new buyer.

After navigating your site, the visitor has come across a product they want to purchase. They click on the checkout icon and proceed to enter the required information. From there the customer is directed to your preferred payment gateway where they are forced input the same information again. This results in lost or aborted sales as consumers are generally lazy and cautious about handing over their sensitive details. Ideally, it would be great if your shopping cart could bypass all these requirements and take the customer straight to your gateway. Unfortunately, there are a number of gateways, all of which require different variables.

So, how do you salvage the sale from here? Log into the administrative section of your shopping cart, find out if you can track the abandoned sale and contact the potential customer via email. Let the customer know that you have observed their attempt to place an order and ask if they had any trouble making a purchase. Explain that you are willing to assistance with any problems they may have experienced. By reaching out to the consumer on a personal level, there might be a chance of recovering the sale. In a worse case scenario, you can at least find out if something in your ordering system isn’t functioning properly. Everyone wants to feel like they are more than just another number. Taking out the time to make contact and find out the problem might give them the confidence that you are worth doing business with.

Charge backs have been a nightmare for many E-commerce businesses. You receive an order for one of your products, ship it out, and a week or so later there is a charge back. This results in you shipping your goods for free, being forced to refund the customer and then pay a charge back fee. One way to avoid this is to make sure your gateway offers some of type of protection against fraud and dishonest customers who purposely cause charge backs after receiving products. While every charge back isn’t of a fraudulent nature, all can have a major impact on your pockets.

As the owner of an E-commerce business, you need to think like a prominent enterprise and focus on your bottom line. If something is negatively affecting your profit, you need to make the proper adjustments to improve the service for customers and ultimately the longevity of your business.

An independent Internet professional currently living in LA, California. Helping people and businesses prosper online since 2006. Follow me on Twitter and Google+.

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